


Starrett Sonnet Cycle

by 221squee



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: A Scandal in Bohemia, A Study in Scarlet, Gen, His Last Bow, Poetry, Silver Blaze, Sonnet, Sonnets, The Final Problem, The Norwood Builder, Vincent Starrett
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-03
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-12 18:04:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4489422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221squee/pseuds/221squee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here dwell together still two men of note,<br/>Immortalized down to their very feet–<br/>A magnifying glass, a pipe, a coat,<br/>The far-famed mythic rooms in Baker Street....</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This cycle of sonnets is based on Vincent Starrett's sonnet "221B". The first line of each of my sonnets is a line of Starrett's sonnet. Even though this work is based on another person's work, I still retain copyright to it, and I forbid any reproduction of my work without written permission from me.

Here dwell together still two men of note,  
Immortalized down to their very feet–  
A magnifying glass, a pipe, a coat,  
The far-famed mythic rooms in Baker Street.  
They wake and breathe again at each turned page  
And are confined to no dim, dusty scribe  
Not only of their time, but ev’ry age  
Is theirs, and so is theirs each human tribe.  
To seek and search for patterns no one sees  
To search the solid earth from Pole to Pole  
Maketh my heart to beat, and thine and these–  
The gaps where we know nothing–hook the soul.  
Our two detectives are humanity.  
Live! Holmes and Watson for eternity.


	2. Chapter 2

Who never lived and so can never die  
Is no born thing, ephemeral as smoke.  
He never won who never dared to try  
Nor wrapped up all his foes at one great stroke.  
Who cannot be defeated cannot win;  
Who seeks life's honey one day finds Death's stings.  
The walls of catacombs keep out life's din.  
Who will contend will have what fortune brings.  
Who cuts the web and finds he has been caught  
And cuts still, watching his destruction loom  
Will be remembered for those things he fought  
And how he shared his enemies' same doom.  
Who stands up strong cannot be one who crawls,  
So together they must go over the falls.


	3. Chapter 3

How very near they seem, yet how remote  
Those shadows that flit through the mind of man.  
Cain’s beam is permanent and Abel’s mote  
Has kept its place since first the world began.  
The scarlet thread of murder wanders wide.  
To say, “I could have made a redder red  
Than that in which that killer’s hands are dyed,”  
Is hubris found in every human head.  
As ev’ry hunter knows his quarry’s way,  
The man who hunts down men must sound that heart  
Identical in predator and prey,  
And find he cannot set himself apart.  
There is no hand incapable of this.  
Behold the heart in many-sidedness.


	4. Chapter 4

That age before the world went all awry  
Has blown downwind on plumes of chlorine gas.  
No horsemen hold their sabres to the sky.  
Machine guns drum to the clarion shotgun blast.  
Yet men still lay their hearth and home aside  
And leave their corpses on some foreign shore  
For England, that she ever may abide.  
Strange notion that these two old men make war.  
It is the young these heavy blows should strike,  
But oldest foxes have the greatest guile.  
When England calls, old bones will, Alfred-like,  
Defend unfailing, then, their sceptred isle.  
Come forth, true hearts, defeat her enemies,  
Then back to peace, your cottage and your bees.


	5. Chapter 5

But still the game’s afoot for those with ears.  
With willing eyes all prey can be outrun.  
Place fact by fact until the record clears-  
All possibilities cut down to one.  
The first glance is just that; now look anew  
Until each sep’rate atom is resolved.  
Take steps so small that there escapes no clue  
And distance to the quarry is dissolved.  
A path of clues arcs o’er the narrow earth  
From ev’ry curried sheep and barkless dog.  
Not foot, but mind, is of the greatest worth,  
And observation burns away all fog.  
Discard no outliers, but look and see  
The possible improbability.


	6. Chapter 6

Attuned to catch the distant view-halloo,  
As gunshot echoes drift across the moor  
The pounding feet drum with the heart's tattoo.  
Once scented, I can never leave the spoor.  
What runs is what I follow til it's treed.  
I know I am a hound and not the fox.  
Give me the prey that might o'ermatch my speed;  
I care naught for the lowly thing which walks.  
That which has ceased to run is that which rots.  
All trails lead to prey; I live to chase.  
Nothing but Death will stop my chasing thoughts  
And only if he can surpass my pace.  
I will run down those things that no one knows  
And will not stop until I'm food for crows.


	7. Chapter 7

England is England yet, for all our fears;  
Heroes are bright still, in an age of knaves.  
Great deeds, unbent by hisses or by cheers  
Still come to pass, though unenshrined in staves.  
Heroes are not by the noble past entrapp'd,  
White marble men upholding magic swords  
But queerly painted strangers, roughly wrapped  
Until they find themselves called to run towards.  
The urge to thwart and not to run away  
While hydra-headed evil sprouts and sprints  
Shows that this age is not gone to decay  
And hero-light from the modern eye still glints.  
We grow strong sep'rately, not falsely one  
Like dragons' teeth in the unsetting sun.


	8. Chapter 8

Only those things the heart believes are true.  
If Socrates could be killed like a cur,  
Unfix the anchored stars and now undo  
Such sin.  Forgo all reason and bestir  
Thyself to unmake ever-fixed night.  
Cause hurtful secrets never to have been,  
Burn hoarded wrongs, and free the world from blight.  
Let fated ills become now unforeseen.  
Take sullied souls and make them virgin pure.  
Be all renewed; be spared the coming wrath.  
Let only what is beautiful endure.  
Wipe clean what’s done and take another path.  
Who aims to hurt disgraces himself then.  
Give him no quarter ‘gainst his fellow men.


	9. Chapter 9

A yellow fog swirls past the windowpane.  
A man with sunken eyes reclines within.  
His doctor weeps to see him in such pain,  
Fighting the fight that only Death will win.  
These tropical diseases strain the heart.  
A specialist shall be brought to Holmes straight.  
Holmes’ wits seem to be coming all apart.  
His talk of oyster-shells will not abate.  
He hides his Watson up behind the bed  
Till the Sumatra planter shall arrive.  
At his confession, Holmes lifts up his head,  
No death-trap wrought that he could not survive.  
A poisoner who kills with foreign poxes  
Will not beat him who can outfox the foxes.


	10. Chapter 10

As night descends upon this fabled street,  
A banging at the door alarms the folk.  
A young man rushes in, white as a sheet,  
And begs on bended knees with fearful croak  
That Mr Holmes might show him innocent  
Of murdering and burning an old man  
The crime, however, was so elegant,  
And almost ev'ry step had gone to plan.  
But fill your vessel to the very brim,  
And you will wish that you had stopped in time.  
Who fakes his death draws interest from him  
Who will not rest until he's solved the crime.  
Light fires under those who coolly lie.  
With phoenix feathers then, the truth shall fly.


	11. Chapter 11

A lonely hansom splashes through the rain.  
A young man brushes by and says, “Goodnight.”  
What good’s a body if it have no brain?  
It seems unnatural to hide a light.  
Yet fires burn bright under some fairer brows  
And lion hearts do not show through the dress.  
The hand that modelled Newton’s mind endowed  
Victoria and Anne and good Queen Bess.  
One woman only, had the wit to find  
What other, lesser minds would overlook.  
A little more than King and less than kind.  
An inborn cunning?  Why, she wrote the book!  
It’s a rare bird who crafts such weighty tomes  
And rarer still who can fool Mr Holmes.


	12. Chapter 12

The ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet.  
From darkness into light there steps a shade  
Who never more on earth I thought to meet  
And since I saw him last my bed was made  
And I must lie in it. I find my life  
Was all a cheat. The man whom I obey,  
Though I would have been someone else's wife,  
Sent my first love to die, sent him astray!  
The foe of his own soldiers for my heart  
Finds foe again in his own conscience's pang  
This night demands that soul and body part  
And for His actions, God shall never hang.  
Give back what's gone; my lost love lives and I  
Will cherish those who make the dead un-die.


	13. Chapter 13

Here, though the world explode, these two survive  
The latest vegetable alkaloid.  
The imp of the perverse, which seems to drive  
Curious cats to leap into the void,  
Calls out for us; let us now go and see,  
Know ev'rything and make ourselves the judge  
Of who is jailed and who will walk free.  
Foreknow the twists of justice, give a nudge  
To the police and make them turn aright.  
If other men are laws unto themselves  
Obedience is but a sorry wight  
And yields ground to him who deepest delves.  
Run and find out; know all, and knowing, act  
And step from ev'ry raging storm intact.


	14. Chapter 14

And it is always eighteen ninety-five.  
My friend, that year, is always at his best.  
A fisher king, he makes his kingdom thrive,  
And flowers bloom from rocks at his behest.  
He gives to all good people what they would--  
Fountains of truth, where all may drink their fill.  
Such monsters as we are, we yet know good,  
And wish to see that city on a hill.  
He casts his light not only on his own;  
Under his lamp, the Tree of Truth, unfurled,  
Sets shoots in lands that were to him unknown.  
The lettered land enriches ev'ry world:  
A tree which grows new science from its stems,  
A magic book which brings forth fruit and gems.


End file.
